The Game
by LadyElaine
Summary: A weary detective hunts down a killer. Warning: Graphic and disturbing imagery.
1. Chapter 1

Title: The Game

Author: LadyElaine

Rating: R

Disclaimer: The characters and situations of Pitch Black belong to USA Films and David Twohy. I make no profit except (hopefully) feedback.

Summary: A weary detective hunts down a killer.

Warning: Graphic and disturbing imagery. This is not a pretty story.

****

The Game 

****

I. 

"Black male, aged between late thirties and early fifties. One stab wound to the lower back. Cuts and abrasions to the arms and hands: he didn't go down easily. Bruising on the back of the neck and on the jaw suggests that he was held, face down, just before being stabbed. Cause of death, massive blood loss due to severing of the abdominal aorta. 

"White female, aged somewhere between eleven and fifteen. Cause of death, slashed throat. No obvious signs of rape, and no defensive wounds on this one, suggesting that she was taken by surprise; blood matching her type found on the hands and neck of the male means she probably died first. 

"Both bodies show extensive bruising and abrasions, as though they'd been tossed around a good bit some time before they died. However, considering that both victims were found abandoned in a lifeboat, these earlier wounds may--

"Wait... There's something in her mouth... Oh, hell."

***

__

LIFEBOAT HARBORS TWO MURDERS.

Two dead bodies, a middle-aged man and a teenaged girl, were found aboard an otherwise abandoned lifeboat which had been docked at the Andreas II station. The man has been identified as Abu al-Walid, a Chrislamic cleric, but the girl's identity remains unknown....

Detective Clarence Miller lay the paper down on his desk and rubbed his face. It had been a long day, and it promised to get longer still. The bodies were still fresh in the morgue, but the bloodhounds in the press were already sniffing around.

"And then there's this," Lowell said. 

Marina Lowell had been Miller's partner for all of five weeks, and her detective's badge was still bright and shiny--but Miller figured her chipper eagerness would fade soon now, especially in the face of these two brutal murders.

A small, grimy slip of paper, sealed inside a plastic bag, landed on the desk between them. Creases on the paper showed how it had been carefully folded. "That," Lowell sighed, "was inside our Jane Doe's mouth."

Neatly written words spidered across the paper in crusty brown. Old blood, Miller realized with a rush of nausea. 

__

Tag. You're it. 

He wanted to curse. He wanted to yell and cry and break something. Instead, he set the evidence carefully back down on the desk, stood up, and with steady hands slipped on his overcoat and straightened his tie.

"You all right?"

"Get your coat, load your weapon and backup, and alert the canine unit," Miller responded. "It's time to go hunt down an old friend."

***

Two years. Two years don't count for much when there's no one to go home to. It was two years ago this month that you were called to yet another homicide scene. Only this time it was at your own apartment. And the victims were your own wife and ten-year-old son.

The whole station had been living in terror of the Minerva System Slasher. Lock your doors at night. Don't leave your children alone. Sleep with a loaded gun beside the bed. 

Sleep? That's a crock. You still wake up sweating at three a.m. every morning. The time of death, they told you. Liver temperature and muscle rigidity and how much blood was left to pool inside the body instead of staining the walls or soaking into the cheap carpet of the apartment.

Lie awake in bed--three o'clock, three-oh-one, three-oh-two--trying not to think about the note carefully folded up and slipped inside little Tyrell's mouth--under the tongue, so you'd have to fish around inside the dear, dead flesh to get it.

__

Tag. You're it. 

***

"Hey. Miller." Marina laid a concerned hand on her partner's shoulder. "Hey. You okay there, Clarence?"

Giving a quick shake of his head, Miller smiled. "Yeah. I'm fine." 

"Ha. You don't look fine to me." Closing the file in front of him, Marina half-sat on the edge of Miller's desk. He looked so tired, she thought she could count every line on his face. "Look. We've been at this since we came in this morning. No one saw anything or anyone suspicious at the port the day the skiff docked, it's been too long for the dogs to find any residual scent, and my watch says we both ought to be home asleep by now. But since I doubt either one of us is going to sleep much till this is over, what say you and I go grab some dinner?"

For a moment, Miller looked like he was about to decline; but then his shoulders straightened, and he took a deep breath. Giving Marina the first real smile of the entire day, he said, "Sure, how 'bout Barney's? I'll buy."

"Uh-uh, Detective. You bought last time. My turn." She helped him into his coat, grabbed her gloves, and added, "And not Barney's. I'm taking you for some real food, not that toxic waste. How's about Momma Mia's?"

Another smile, and Marina could feel the day's tension finally draining. "Sure," Miller said. "And... thanks."


	2. Chapter 2

****

II. 

"Cassie? Cassie, honey, I'm home!" Darla set her coat on the countertop, grateful that her job let her afford enough heating to combat the perpetual station chill. Maybe in a few more years she'd have earned enough that they could move back to Earth to live closer to family.

"Cassie?" she called again. Strange; Cassie was usually back from her after-school programs by now. But Darla dismissed the automatic worry: a fifteen-year-old girl could be expected to come home late once in a while, right? 

A glance into the kitchen showed a skillet still on the stove; the eggs in it were burned black, but the smoke detector must have shut off the stove's power. A glass lay on its side near the sink, water pooled around it, and a plate had shattered on the floor. _Dammit, Cassie, how often do I have to tell you to clean up after yourself?_ The worry was back full force now. 

Claws skittered on the living room floor, and Darla jumped--but it was only Cheddar, his orange eyes dilated and bottle-brush tail lashing. He hissed at her and scampered down the hall toward Cassie's bedroom. His paws left red prints on the floor, and for one long, confused moment, Darla wondered where in the world he'd gotten into red paint.

***

"White female, fifteen years old. Found unclothed in her bedroom, arms and legs spread wide. Bruising around the neck and petechial hemorrhaging in the eyes points to strangulation; however, loss of blood suggests the victim's heart was still beating when the stabbing began. Epithelials under the fingernails show that she fought back, but she was probably rendered unconscious by the strangulation.

"Cause of... cause of death, twenty-seven stab wounds to the torso. Five stab wounds are situated on and around each nipple. The rest are scattered on the lower abdomen in a... smiley face pattern.

"Despite the suggestive posing of the body, there is no vaginal tearing or semen. She's not a virgin, but it doesn't look like she's engaged in sexual activity in a while--"

"Doesn't make what happened to her any nicer, does it?"

Agnes almost dropped her forceps. "Dammit, Clarence, do you _really_ have to do that?"

"Of course he does," Miller's partner--what was her name? Mary or Maria or something like that--said with a queasy smile as Agnes turned off her recorder. "You work in the morgue, Dr. MacArthur--the only way to scare you is to be a sneaky bastard."

Sighing, Agnes laid the recorder down and returned the smile. "I'm sorry, I just... haven't had one this bad in a while."

No one asked what "this one" was.

Miller's eyes skipped over the body, and Agnes knew the sterile environment didn't help any. It was still a dead child, and lying on the cold metal of the autopsy table wasn't much more dignified than lying in the pose she'd been found in.

The detective cleared his throat, and both women jumped. "You find anything in her mouth?" he asked.

"Wait--hold it." The smiling young detective's face had gone pale. "I think--I'm gonna go find a handy toilet," she said, and dashed out.

"She's a nice girl," Agnes said.

"She's my partner," Miller grunted back.

"She's still a nice girl."

"Quit playing the meddling spinster and show me what you got."

Agnes nodded, retrieving the sealed baggy from beside the body. "Well, it's... not quite what we expected."

Miller read the note aloud. "'Nine-nineteen-twenty-four'? What the hell's that supposed to mean?"

"It means your killer is up to his old game again. He expects you to figure these clues out. At some level, he actually wants to be caught--otherwise he wouldn't leave these notes."

"Since when did you become a criminologist?"

Agnes laughed and patted Miller's hand. "Since when can't an old bitch learn new tricks?" She sobered and gave him a sympathetic look. "I was there last time too, remember? We got him then, we'll get him again."

***

The knocking at the door made Tess wince and yell, "Hey, I _told_ you, go comb your hair and put your _nice_ pants on!"

Tee and tee, that's what everyone called Tess and Tommy, her little brother. But her friends weren't going to call Tommy anything anymore, Tess swore, if he embarrassed her in front of this guy tonight! 

"He's single, and he's got money," she said to herself. "That makes him a good idea."

She opened the door on a giant bouquet of flowers. _Real flowers, all the way out here! Tommy had _better_ put on his good pants._

"Tommy, Rick's here!" she called out, taking the flowers to the kitchen to put them in water. _Scissors, I need scissors_, she thought, and turned around to find that Rick had already brought some.

And by then it was already too late.


	3. Chapter 3

****

III. 

__

Dogs in space, Miller thought sourly. _Sounds like some idiot's idea of a sci-fi show._

Bloodhounds, like most purebreds, were rare these days, so most outposts had to rely on half-breeds and mongrels--not as good at tracking as scent-hounds, but still dogs and therefore more reliable than any mechanical nose. Wally, who looked like he was mostly shepherd and beagle, had been leading his handler--followed by Miller, Lowell, and a handful of uniforms--on a merry chase around Level 27.

But now the dog came to the Hub, where forty-something free-fall lifts glided lazily up and down past hundreds of separate station levels.

"This is as far as we can take it," the handler announced. "Wally's not gonna find anything else for you--too many different scents in too many different lifts. Even if he did figure out which lift your perp got onto, there's no way the scent would still be intact on the level he exited to."

"The interstellar version of crossing a river to throw off the scent," Lowell quipped.

"Well, in the old days, bloodhounds would actually track a scent over water," the handler began with a gleam in his eye, but Miller cut him off with a short "Thanks," and strode angrily away.

"Where to now?" Lowell puffed when she caught up.

"To see what the autopsy turned up."

"Oh, gee. I feel better already."

***

"White female, age nineteen. Cause of death, three stab wounds to the chest; the weapon seems to have been a pair of bloody scissors found at the scene. As with the last two female victims, no signs of rape are present; however, the body has been mutilated: the victim's hair was cut off; blood in the remaining stubble indicates that the cutting happened after the stabbing. Also... her eyes have been removed.

"The victim's hair and eyes were not found at the scene. 

"White male, age ten. Epithelials under the fingernails and blood spots on the clothing which do not match either victims' type suggest that he fought back. The same blood type was found on a baseball bat, along with blood matching the victim's. Cause of death--"

Agnes shut the recorder off as the door swung open, admitting the two detectives--and then swung open again as Miller's partner took one look at the bodies and walked back out.

Miller shrugged. "Marina's fine at crime scenes, no matter how bad. She just can't handle seeing..." He motioned to the occupied tables, and Agnes nodded in understanding.

"Not everyone can. I lost my lunch the first time."

The detective gave a short laugh, then said, "Get this. Nine-nineteen-twenty-four? It's our female vic's birthday."

"Cassie Branch's birthday?"

"No, Tess Harper's."

Agnes looked down at the girl's body and shook her head. "He already had this one picked out when he killed the last one." She sighed and handed over another small evidence bag. "And it looks like he's got the next one lined up."

"'Brown hair, blue eyes,'" Miller read off. "That's probably half the damn station population. But Tess Harper had blonde hair and green eyes. Maybe that's why he took them."

"He's never taken trophies before, Clarence. Believe me, I would know. Something else is going on here."

In the silence that followed, they both heard weeping from outside the door.

"Go see to your partner, detective."

***

There was no reason for Miller's heart to skip a beat when he heard Marina crying. No reason for the door to swing open in slow motion, or for him to suddenly feel every ache in every joint when he saw her leaning against the wall, her face in her hands. But there it was.

"Hey," he said gently. "It's late. Why don't I see you home?"

She turned away to wipe her face, as if she was ashamed to be seen crying over two dead kids. "Sorry," she muttered.

"Nothing to be sorry about." He threw an arm around her shoulders and ushered her out of the medical complex and into a waiting tram. It beeped a query for a destination, and he responded with, "Section 91 lift."

"I thought I could handle it," Marina whispered. Miller took her hand, and she clung to it, her grasp convulsively tightening and letting go. "I mean, I've seen dead bodies before--God knows I wore a uniform long enough before my transfer, but..."

After a few short minutes, the tram let them out at the Hub, where there was a lift waiting, fortuitously empty. "What level are you?" Miller asked, and she shakily keyed it in. They held onto the rails as gravity disengaged and the lift gently floated up toward the nine hundredth level.

"It doesn't get any better, does it?" 

Miller took a deep breath. "Most of the time, either you catch your perp, or he leaves the station--or you have to kill him. And then... you move on to the next case."

"I think I prefer the third option," Marina laughed bitterly.

__

No kidding, Miller thought as their lift glided into the lock.

"This is me," Marina said as they reached one of the many anonymous doors. The last number swung loosely upside down, making it look like she lived in 92h. She unlocked the door, but turned back, her face pale and cadaverous against the darkened interior. "I don't want to be by myself tonight."

"I... guess I can sleep on the couch," Miller found himself saying.

"No. Clarence. I don't want to be alone."

He hesitated. "I snore."

"So do I."

"I wake up at three a.m. every morning."

"I wake up at two-thirty," she retorted, a smile beginning to play around her lips.

"Liar."

"So stay the night and prove me wrong."

He stayed. Three o'clock came and went, and neither one woke up.


	4. Chapter 4

****

IV. 

"No way!" Emma giggled. "Besides, there was way too much blood, which always grosses me out."

"Wait a sec--I thought you liked David Blair," Kaito teased, tucking a brown curl behind Emma's ear.

"Yeah, but not when he's the bad guy! I swear, when _Devil in the Dark IX _comes out, I am so boycotting that thing!" 

Kaito laughed. "Yeah, right. That's what you said last time. What, no more--what'd you call him?--blond, blue-eyed boy-toy?"

Emma licked her lips and smiled. "Nuh-uh. I've fallen for the Samurai warrior-type."

Kaito had just enough time to flick off the holovision, plunging the bedroom into darkness, before Emma pushed him back onto the bed and threw off her shirt. 

"Know what?" Emma whispered.

"What?"

"I'm glad I said yes."

"I'm glad you said yes, too," Kaito murmured, and pulled her forward to bury his face between her breasts.

When the screaming started up again, the old man next door woke with a start, pounded on the wall, and threw his pillow over his head. Those kids and their damn horror movies. 

Usually when he beat on the wall, they'd turn the volume down, but now it sounded like they'd gone and turned it up instead. He ought to go over there right now and give them hell, but no way was he going out of his apartment this late, not with that killer on the loose. Well, he'd give them what for tomorrow morning, that was for sure. 

***

Miller woke to an empty bed. 

For a moment he didn't know where he was, but the previous night came back in a rush, and he smiled. Stumbling into the kitchen, wearing nothing but his skin, he found a note:

__

There's eggs and toast in the keeper and coffee on the stove, and your clothes are clean. See you later, sleepyhead.

__

Marina

Half an hour later, he found Marina in their office, reading a file. The file. He nudged her. "Hey, early bird. Outta my chair."

She vacated it with a tired smile. When he sat down, she squeezed his shoulder and said, "About last night... Thanks."

Miller nodded his understanding and covered her hand with his. Last night hadn't been about sex--as nice as that had been--but about comfort. The tired old dog and the frightened new one, huddled up together for warmth.

Marina's hand was still on his shoulder, and he looked up. "I know," he said. "There's been another one."

***

"White female, age eighteen. Three stab wounds to the chest, not immediately fatal. She bled out, both internally and externally, but eventual cause of death was drowning due to blood buildup in the lungs. 

"Inside the victim's mouth, instead of the expected folded note... is the cover of a matchbook from Momma Mia's restaurant.

"Bruising around the neck and shoulders indicates a possible rear stranglehold by her attacker. Rape kit is inconclusive, though unlikely--vaginal swabs found DNA matching the male victim, and vaginal micro-tearing is consistent with consensual sex.

"The victim was approximately eight weeks pregnant. 

"Asian male, age twenty. Extensive bruising on the head, arms, chest, and ribs, as well as several deep cuts to the hands and arms, indicate that he fought with his killer. Fracturing of three ribs was caused by a blunt object... possibly repeated kicking. Cause of death, loss of blood due to slashing of the throat.

"Both victims had large amounts of each others' blood on their bodies due to their positioning, the male victim lying face down on top of the female."

Agnes turned off the recorder and cocked her head at Miller, who said, "Positioning? They died while having sex."

"They very well may have been surprised during sex, Clarence, but not in that position." She pointed to the grayish blue mottling Emma Otsu's neck and shoulders. "That's not some kind of choking fetish, someone grabbed her and held her from behind." Standing with her back to Miller, Agnes took his arm and wrapped it around her neck to demonstrate.

The arm trembled against her skin for a moment, then Miller exploded. "Jesus Christ, he watched his wife die on top of him!"

Agnes sighed and removed Miller's arm. "I'm afraid it's not quite that simple. She wouldn't have died first." She sighed again, shaking her head, and added, "She may very well have lived through the struggle between her husband and killer, and possibly still been alive when she was moved back to the bed, where the killer then laid her husband on top of her."

Miller shuddered and rubbed his face, and Agnes motioned to the door, saying, "Shall we take this out where your partner can add her thoughts?"

Out in the hall, Agnes caught Marina up on the information while Miller took a quick trip to the men's room.

"There was blood splatter all over the crime scene," Marina said when her partner returned, and Miller nodded. 

"Blood on the floor beside the bed could have been where she was thrown off," he said. "The bedroom mirror was broken--hell, almost everything in that room was broken--"

"I'd guess that Mr. Otsu was quite the fighter," Agnes interjected.

Miller nodded again. "Yeah, he was a member of their section's shin-do league. But he couldn't keep our man off. So the killer comes in while they're doing what newlyweds do best, grabs the wife, who's on top, from behind and stabs her." He pantomimed the act, this time using Marina as a model. "Someone, either the killer or the husband, throws her off--"

"Thank you Clarence, but I can throw myself around just fine," Marina said, unwrapping Miller's arm. "And then Otsu tries to fight off the killer, but is killed himself. But--so why were the bodies positioned like that?"

A long silence was the only answer.

***

Miller stumbled back to his apartment in a haze. Marina had offered to buy them dinner, but he'd declined, saying he had to get a good night's sleep.

Instead, he'd made a long stop at Barney's, where a handful of beers served as dinner and two shots of tequila as dessert. He didn't want to admit it to Marina--though he suspected Agnes knew very well--but he couldn't shake the image of Kaito Otsu watching as his wife was stabbed above him.

He saw himself instead of Otsu, his Anne in the young Mrs. Otsu's place.

His apartment door opened at a touch, though he could have sworn he'd locked it that morning--no, the morning before--and there was a package lying on the floor just inside.

He bent down to open it, and recoiled with an involuntary yell. Five beers and two tequilas evaporated as his hands fumbled for the phone on his belt.

"Agnes. Agnes, wake up. I just found Tess Harper's missing hair and eyes."

He snapped the phone shut and reached with trembling fingers for the neatly folded note taped to the lid of the box.

__

Why haven't you found me yet? 


	5. Chapter 5

****

V. 

Three o'clock. Three-oh-one. Three-oh-two.

__

Tag. You're it. 

There's a Catholic church on Level 302.

You're not Catholic--you barely even believe in God--but there you are, inside that church. There's a little black board announcing the hymn numbers: 9, 19, 24. And there's Jesus, hanging nailed to his cross above the altar. But the icon's wrong: there's not enough blood.

__

Why haven't you found me yet? 

Inside the confessional, there's barely enough room to breathe, and the little red cushion is hardly worth sitting on. 

"How long has it been since your last confession?"

"Since... never. I'm not Catholic."

"That's okay. I'm not a priest."

And he's right, because a priest doesn't have eyes that glint silver even through the confessional screen. Your hand presses flat against that screen, and you can feel the heat of his hand pressing back.

"Why haven't you found me yet?"

You burst through the flimsy door, but he's already gone. The only other person in the church is Marina, who is screaming. She's screaming because she's missing her hair and eyes, and she can't find them and so she's screaming--

***

Miller woke in a cold sweat as the bedside phone shrilled again. He picked it up, glancing at the glowing clock face that read 3:07, and his heart sank. Oh, God, not another one.

"_Miller, get your ass down here. I'm about to fire your goddamn partner... Or else decorate her._"

The department was buzzing, nightshift officers gathered around chatting bemusedly with each other in low tones. Spilling out of Miller and Lowell's office, pinned and taped to every available wall and desk, were scores of photographs and crime scene reports. In the middle of it all stood Marina, hands on hips and lips pursed in thought, and Chief Bonito, who looked at least as rumpled as Miller felt.

"Would you please," Bonito snarled, "tell me what the hell she's doing, so I can go back to bed?"

"We're missing something," Marina said before Miller could even open his mouth. She turned around to face him. "I don't know what it is, but we're missing it."

Miller looked over at the chief, who threw his hands up in the air and stalked out.

Marina ran her hands through her hair. "We know he kills more women than men, so let's look at those again. What do they all have in common?"

"They're all young, pretty, and white," called out a comfortably middle-aged black woman. A host of chuckles answered her.

A hollow feeling opened in the pit of Miller's stomach. "We already knew that," he pointed out. "but _why_ does he focus on that type? Why's he got a penchant for young, pretty white women?"

"Maybe..." Marina began, but stopped. Then, "What if it's not a sexual thing for him?" she blurted. "Just throwing that idea out there."

"Then why the spread-eagled, naked pose for Cassie Branch? Why the blatantly sexual posing of the Otsus?"

Marina shook her head wordlessly, and Miller turned around to the wall where the male victims' photos and information hung. "You know what I don't see?" he said after a long moment. "I don't see any white _males_."

"Tommy Harper," Marina said. "Wait--no... We just figured he was beaten to death with the baseball bat because that's what he used to attack the killer. But what if the killer had some weird reason of his own to use the bat instead of the kitchen scissors?" She snagged the Harper boy's picture down, disappeared into their office, and came out a moment later with a photo that Miller knew far too well. 

Marina slapped both pictures down on a desk, side by side. "What's the difference," she started. "What's the difference between Tommy Harper and your son Tyrell?"

Miller sagged into the chair by the desk. "Tommy Harper's parents were both white."

"All the females he killed were white," Marina muttered. "But none of the males he killed were--or at least none of the males he killed with a bladed weapon."

"And our man's of mixed race. Like Tyrell." Miller rubbed his temples, trying to will away the growing headache, the thoughts of scissors and knives and his little boy.

Marina grabbed her bag and the two pictures and started for the exit. 

"Where are you going?" 

"To pay a call on Dr. MacArthur. I want her to do a DNA test." She turned around and added, "And I want to talk to Darla Branch again later today, too."

A moment after her departure, the door slammed open again. Chief Bonito marched in, looking somewhat neater than before but no less aggravated, and announced, "This may be over, kids. Someone shot and killed what they thought was a burglar. Our guys on the scene say the body matches the description of the killer."


	6. Chapter 6

****

VI. 

Tomas leaned back against the wall of the dark, narrow side street, took another deep drag, and wiped his eyes. Man, if his dad found him doing this--on break at the store, no less--he'd blow a fuse. But Tomas was an upstanding junior citizen otherwise. His dad made damn sure of that.

Holding in his breath, Tomas willed the bittersweet fumes to dull at least some of the pain. This whole thing was his father's fault--well, not the whole thing; his dad wasn't a psycho murderer, after all--but just look at the fit he'd thrown when he found the condoms in Tomas' room. 

__

You never asked me her name, didn't even ask to meet her--just how old she was. And then yelled at me about statutory rape. Tomas exhaled with a cough that was half sob. _Yeah, well, then she was statutorily raping me, too. Rape. We were gonna get married soon as we were old enough._

But Tomas knew his father's real worry was that he'd turn out like his no-good bum grandfather. His dad had pulled himself up by his butt-hairs to get where he was, and Tomas didn't want to ruin that for him.

Stamping out the last of the joint, Tomas sprayed several squirts of breath mint into his mouth--and then on his shirt and pants for good measure. The Lee's, the elderly couple who ran the Level 27 Goodwill store that he volunteered at, were nice folks--a little slow on the uptake, but nice--and he didn't want to get them into any trouble.

Tomas vowed to himself that he'd tell his dad everything once his shift at the store was over. Maybe that would help patch things up between them. 

A noise behind the dumpster startled him, and he leaned around to see. "Hey kitty," he crooned, "what are you doing out here?" The eyes reflecting back at him blinked once, then rose--and rose. _Alley cats don't get that big_, Tomas thought in apprehension. Then something slammed into him, and the world tilted crazily. 

It hurt too much to draw breath to scream, even as he watched the knife come down in slow and careful precision.

***

"Stupid goddamn overeager rookie dickheads!" Miller cursed as he made his way back through the station. There was a woman waiting in his office when he walked in, and he immediately regretted his language.

"Ms. Branch. It's good to see you again. How are you doing?"

She took his proffered hand timidly, and said, "The other detective, that pretty young woman--"

"Detective Lowell."

"Yes, Detective Lowell. She said I should come in here. She said to tell you what I'd told her."

"She hasn't called me about this. Are you sure she asked you to come in?"

"Oh, yes. She said it was very important."

Miller sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. She said, she said, she said. "Did Detective Lowell say anything else?"

Ms. Branch sat very still for a moment, then looked up at Miller. "Oh. Yes. She said to tell you she had one other thing to do, and then she would come right back here to the office."

"I guess this means the fat lady hasn't sung yet?" Agnes leaned through the doorway, looking out of place in her starched, white lab coat.

"No, the fat lady hasn't sung," Miller said, momentarily forgetting Ms. Branch. "But those baby cops'll be singing soprano before I get done with them. Why is it that every bald man on the station has been mistaken for our killer?" 

Agnes smiled and said, "I have the information your partner asked for. And as it was all she could do to step into my parlor to ask for it, I figured I'd make it a little easier on her by coming here."

Miller excused himself to Ms. Branch and pulled Agnes out of the office. "Does this have something to do with the Branch girl?" he murmured.

Agnes handed several sheets of paper to him. "Actually, I think this may have something to do with all your victims."

The phone inside Miller's office chirped, and he stepped back in to answer it. A long moment later, the papers in his hand forgotten, he said, "I'll be there in two minutes... Does Bonito know yet?... Shit."

"What is it?" Agnes asked as Miller hung up.

"They just found another one."

Sitting alone in the corner chair, Darla Branch began to quietly cry.

***

Chief Bonito had never been a large man, but it had always seemed that he could fill up a room just by walking into it. Now he was barely even a silhouette behind the tinted windows of the police skimmer.

Miller looked away from the vehicle, but his eyes refused to focus again on the body bag, instead settling on the smiling face on the Goodwill store across the street. It was someone else's murdered child, and the worst violation of privacy he could think of was to intrude on another parent's grief. All of the victims had been someone's children, of course, but even the death of Cassie Branch hadn't hit Miller like this. 

This wasn't some poor, single mother he'd never met before. This was Gil Bonito, who had given Miller the same privacy when Tyrell had been killed.

Miller had arrived late on the scene; the coroner and EMTs were already there and finishing up. No one had wanted to leave the body of a station official's child out in the open for very long. He flipped open his phone and dialed Marina's number, but got only her voice-mail. He sighed and turned back toward the police skimmer. They would catch up tonight at the restaurant. For now, better a friend to drive the chief back than some faceless junior uniform.

The department's interrogation room was the quietest place to be found, and held at least the illusion of privacy. 

Miller watched behind the anonymity of the one-way viewscreen as Chief Bonito entered hesitantly, then sat in the chair facing Ms. Branch. The chief spoke quietly to Ms. Branch, then passed a photograph to her. She nodded. 

Bonito's head bowed and Ms. Branch's hand went to her mouth. Her other hand found the chief's, and her face crumpled in tears.

Miller decided then that if and when they found the killer, he would not arrest him. It would cost him his career, and possibly his freedom, but he would do everything he could to make sure the man didn't leave the station alive.


End file.
